13. Running Away

Shonasha had not expected anyone to be there. The roof was falling in at the front and the porch was over grown with weeds growing through the rotted wood. It had seemed like a perfect place to hide and lay out of sight while the patrols thundered past, the hooves of their cantering horses shaking the very trees to their roots. Never had he expected someone to be living there.

"Who's there?" a frail voice said from behind him.

It was only as he turned around that Shonasha noticed the flicker of a fire's light dancing on the wooden walls. The frail voice had come from a hunched over old man seated in a thread bare seat by a tiny stone fire place. The fire was burning feebly on a few dry twigs that crackled as they were eaten away. Shonasha instinctively pulled the hood of his cloak further over his face, "Just a traveling stranger. I mistook your home for abandoned. I'll be leaving now, it's best you forgot you even saw me,"

He made to exit through the door, but the sound of the old man's voice made him stop, "I couldn't even see you if I wanted to my boy," There was a taste of irony in the words, like it hurt the man to even say them. Shonasha turned around curiously and saw in a flicker of the firelight the man's impossibly pale eyes. He was blind. "And if you're hiding from the patrol that just passed by, I wouldn't leave just yet. That was just the broad sweep, they'll be checking more thoroughly in a few minutes and I do believe they would find you quite easily."

"Well I'm afraid grandfather," he added the term hopping to win him over with respect, "That unless you have some way of hiding me here, that they will find me if I stayed as well."

"Grandfather," The man said in his dry voice. He seemed to be testing it on his tongue, as if trying to remember how to say it," There's something I haven't been called in many years. Why don't you come and sit by the fire?" He gestured to a dusty worn rug at his feet in front of the fire place, best to keep yourself warm while you still can."

Shonasha thought about turning around, exiting through the door he had entered from and hoping that the old man would forget he had ever been there. But what if the old man decided to speak to the patrols and tell him of the stranger who had passed into his house. Then they would know that they were looking in the right area.

"Very well," Shonasha said begrudgingly. He crossed the few strides of the room's length. He unhooked his short sword from his belt and then sat down on the little rug with a sigh.

"There, that's better now isn't it?" The man said with a toothless chuckle. "Now, while you are seated there so comfortably, how about doing me the honor of telling me your story. It's not everyday that I have a criminal passing through my home."

"I'm not a criminal," Shonasha said rather sternly. He shot the old man a glare, aware that he wouldn't be able to see it.

"The patrol seem to think otherwise," He packed a pipe with tobacco as he said this, "And they are usually the authority on such things." He chuckled into the pipe as he lit it. The red embers casting their glow onto his lined face, " That is, unless you'd like to convince me otherwise."

Shonasha could have left. He could have thrown caution to the wind and tried his best to escape unseen. But Shonasha got a sense that it was safe here and perhaps the old man was simply lonely and wished to hear another voice in that dark world he lived in. So Shonasha told him his story, and not just the abbreviated version that he had shared with many others before. No, this time he laid out the story in it's entirety from the many years ago when he had grown up in the manor house on the hill, to the recent events that had occurred at the coronation. Is was a story that only he and Heso, who he had abandoned on that cold night, knew.

As he spoke, he couldn't help but think how ridicules it all sounded. But what difference would it make, the man could disbelief if he wanted to. Shonasha almost wasn't sure if it was all how he said anymore. But it was a good story.

When he had finished, the man puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, "May I be honest with you my boy?"

"Yes grandfather, of course," Shonasha said, though he was a little weary of what the older man might say.

"I think you're a damned fool,"

Shonasha would have protested this point if the man had not gestured him to silence. Outside there was the sound of hoof beats. Very quietly the man said, "The stone below you hides a crawlspace. Quickly!"

With no time to ask questions, Shonasha lifted up the dusty rug to reveal a loose stone underneath. Below was a small musty hole, that smelled as if it had once been used to store food. "Now it'll be used to harbor a murderer," Shonasha thought grimly as he dropped down into the space. The stone was replaced above him, and it became impossibly dark. He heard the shuffling of the old mans feet overhead and then a hollow banging. The patrolmen had come to the door.

He did not trust himself to listen to the exchange but instead thought back to the past that he had just been speaking of. Surely he had not come this far to be discovered in some stinking hole. When he heard the stone being moved again he reached for the dagger hidden in his boot, but he was relieved to see that it was only the old man.

"They've gone, and with any luck they won't be returning again." The old man watched as Shonasha pulled himself out of the hole, then he shuffled aside to fill a kettle with water.

"Thank you grandfather, I'm sure you're kindness will not go unrewarded," Shonasha said. He hoped that the gratitude he felt was present in his voice.

The man however was not listening. He was hanging up the kettle over the little fire which he showered with a spare few extra twigs, "As I was saying before, you are a damned fool. Granted there are certainly strange things at work to have brought you to my doorstep,"

"How...?"

He did not let himself be interrupted again, "You see, like your 'friend' that you have left behind, I also was once gifted with the Sight. You are probably unaware of this, but no gift such as that can be misused without repercussions. In your self-centered folly, you probably missed all of the signs of the pain he went through to get you this far alive. You see, to be gifted with the Sight is to lose all privileges to the 'self'. You are not your own person anymore, and to act in favor of your own gain is a sin so grave that death seems to always be in its wake.

"When I was but a young man I had a friend whom I quarreled with. We had both fallen for the same woman you see, but of course she could not share her heart with both of us. I had a vision one day of his death at the hands of a rock slide. The very next day I invited him to travel with me to that same place from my vision. And just as clearly as I had seen it the night before, I watched my friend die under the power of the great earth. In that moment I felt a twinge behind my eyes, but I waved it away with the excuse of excitement.

"My young and stubborn heart leapt with joy for surely the woman would now welcome me with open arms. I did not, however, foresee the impact his death would have on her. She attempted to kill herself. But visions always presented themselves to me and I was able to stop her from doing the deed. Each time though, when I drew away the knife she grasped so tightly, or pulled her from the depths of the river she wished would drown her, the pain behind my eyes grew stronger.

"Finally, we were married in the springtime and I saw a smile bloom across my love's face once more. I thought we would finally be happy. A year later she gave birth to a daughter, my pride and joy, but the fates deemed that one should cost the other, and my wife passed away just three years later.

"Do you know what it looks like to peer into the future young traveler? I can only liken it to trying to upon a spider's web when the sun is shining very brightly all around you. The possibilities and crossroads are all laid out before you, but they are so hard to glimpse. You stare for the longest time until you hope that you've seen it right, but by then your eyes are burning from the inside and the present is passing you by.

"I tried so hard to give my daughter everything she could have ever wanted, but in doing so I lost sight of the her that was standing there before me. Before I knew it, I could no longer look upon her face. The only way to see her was in the fuzzy remains of my memories or some washed out glimpse of her future.

"She grew up and married a man in the village. They had a son together, my grandson. He was born blind, I expect, as one last attempt to spite me for my selfishness and then a fire burned down the entire village except for my home.

"As you can see, the forest has been content to grow in around what was left of it. All that remains are the few graves of my family that I've tended over the years.

"It seemed to me, that this friend of yours has probably been making sacrifices for you, and you have not even noticed."

But Shonasha wasn't listening. He was thinking back to the night of the coronation, how he had found Heso resting in the foyer, a damp cloth laying over his eyes. There were other occurrences too. Shonasha had always thought he had looked tired, but perhaps it was the pain in his eyes, whittling away at his sight. "So then," he said quietly, not wanting to say his thoughts," I've made the wrong decision."

"There are no wrong decisions," The old man said as he leaned back in his chair, "There are simply those decisions we are glad to have made, and those that we learn from. Never should we waste our time on regrets. It will not change what has happened. But learning, that effects what we will do in the future."

"Of course," Shonasha said, nodding his head before looking up suddenly, "You have sheltered me from the patrol and have opened my eyes to much, how can I repay you grandfather?"

"I have but one request of you my boy. I am old, my time grows near. At this point in my life the only thing I wish for is to be buried beside my family. I do not wish to ask such a thing of a stranger, but you see I have no one else in the world to supply such a service."

"Of course grandfather, it shall be done."

Two months later, when the springtime had just begun to soften the land, and the animals once again returned, Shonasha dug a grave on the outside of the man's garden and laid him to rest, where he was once again reunited with the family that he had longed for all his life.

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